


A Thousand Words

by estelraca



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2541929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/pseuds/estelraca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feuilly meets Jehan during his first few days in college.  Jehan has words that Feuilly didn't know he needed, and it isn't long before Feuilly falls in love.  Reincarnation, modern-day.  Written for the Les Mis Trick or Treat Exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1001paperboxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001paperboxes/gifts).



> WARNING for oblique mention of suicide. Written for 1001paperboxes for the Les Mis Trick or Treat Exchange.

_A Thousand Words_

Jehan has names for things that Feuilly does not.

Feuilly isn't sure if that's what first draws him to the other, or if it was something else. Perhaps the way Jehan dresses, switching back and forth between masculine and feminine, mixing and matching styles in ways that Feuilly has never seen before? That could certainly have been part of it.

Feuilly, after all, has a dozen suspensions on his academic record. All of them are for fighting. None of the incidents were him fighting for himself, but it didn't matter. He was tall and lanky and quiet, and he was defending people who were _different—_ who wore the wrong clothes, who spoke with funny accents, who liked the wrong people, who had the wrong parents—and there never seemed to be enough instigation to make the incidents not his fault. Even though words can kill (and he learned that in his first foster home, learned that words can drive a person to take a life that is too painful to keep living and offer it to whatever gods are listening), they aren't reason enough to fight. Even if he says he was pushed first, his words are questioned. (There are parents that are worse to have than _none_ , but there is no help to be had from the silent dead, either, no matter how much Feuilly imagines they would have loved him.)

Jehan doesn't need his protection, though. Jehan is quite capable of fighting off anyone who would hurt him, and he has words that can cut more cleanly than anyone else Feuilly has ever listened to.

_That_ is certainly a part of why Feuilly stays. Jehan spins words with a grace that Feuilly wishes he could capture in his art. Light and dark, hard and soft, new and old, broken and smooth as silk, native and foreign, Jehan takes words and crafts them into pictures and rhythms and emotions that draw Feuilly into new worlds. He tries to draw the words, sometimes, to capture a bit of the feel that Jehan is creating, but he never seems to be able to manage it. The same plays that work with words don't translate directly to art, though he tries his best to find a bit of the same feeling.

Jehan asks to see his work, makes high-pitched sounds of joy and deep growling rumbles of approval as Feuilly explains what he was trying to do with each piece. As they talk about light and shadow, the ways that one can try to capture the line between silence and voice, the ways that images show words show images, Feuilly realizes that he is a little bit in love with the person sitting beside him.

Jehan doesn't question the feelings, when Feuilly finally shares them, red-faced and shaking. Instead he wraps Feuilly in a tight embrace, smiling as though Feuilly has just gifted him with a treasure beyond measure, and quietly asks for more clarification.

Feuilly has not heard most of the words that Jehan rattles off to him, or at least not in the context that Jehan uses them in. Who knew there were so many different ways to understand the syllables that go into _romantic_? (And Feuilly can see, somehow, an image of Jehan drinking wine from a human skull as someone recites passages from Lord Byron's poems, an image that seems to be ripped from another life.)

It takes Feuilly a month to assimilate all of the information that Jehan throws at him that night, to browse the Internet links and find the books at libraries and consider, for himself, where he falls on spectrums that he never would have dreamed existed before.

He doesn't think people intentionally kept information from him. Not at his last home, at least, with the foster parents who insisted he look into colleges, with the social worker who promised him that he could overcome the _difficulties_ his life has had. They tried to do what they could, but there are worlds out here beyond their imaging, words that he wishes everyone were taught in school.

He meets Jehan's friends while he is still learning. He goes drinking with Bahorel, quickly establishes a happy camaraderie that sees them through bar fights and getting arrested for illegal protest. He meets Enjolras, who speaks a different kind of poetry from Jehan, one that is somehow both more and less earthly, one that paints pictures of futures Feuilly will happily die to see to fruition. He meets Joly and Bossuet and Grantaire, and finds their affable company comfortable; he meets Courfeyrac and Combeferre, and revels in the intellectual debate that explodes around the two.

He loves them all, and tries out all the different words for love that Jehan has taught him, and finds that even when more words are given there still aren't enough for all the shades of nuance the human heart is capable of.

(He dreams, sometimes, that he has seen these people before. He dreams that he has found this family, in the past, and been enveloped in their warm arms, and bled his heart's blood out so that it mixed with theirs. They are bittersweet dreams, fragments of fragments that he can rarely grasp onto in the morning. He tells Jehan of them, and Jehan takes his hand, squeezes it tightly, and tells him that dreams are dreams, except when they're not. It is somehow a comforting thing to hear.)

By the end of his second month at college, Feuilly is unequivocally a part of the same group as Jehan, and he knows what he wants from the poet.

They go out to eat—Jehan chooses the place and pays, despite Feuilly's protest. They go dancing—Feuilly chooses the place, somewhere he has had recommended to him by friends that Jehan doesn't know, and knows that he chose wisely as soon as he and Jehan are melting into the bodies on the dance floor.

He kisses Jehan, slowly, one hand buried in the ruffles cascading out of the collar of Jehan's shirt, the other buried in Jehan's long hair.

He doesn't try to say anything afterwards, just smiling at the poet, who smiles back at him.

Jehan has given him words that he needed, but sometimes a picture is still the best way to communicate.


End file.
